Characters - Creature and Boy

 This is my creature. What's not more badass than a scaled sabre-tooth tiger with a horn and a scorpion tale? Haha. I wanted to go for a little bit of a anime/stylized look, so I haven't gone into much detail such as the feet. But I didn't want him looking like a Pokemon (I hope I haven't!) As you can see below, I tried a couple more different colour variations but I preferred this one the most. He'll be pretty big, about twice the size of a regular sabre-tooth. You won't really see much of him in the film, only glimpses, until right when the boy kills him.

 

Very rough drawing of the boy, just to give you an idea of what he'll probably look like. Again, I sort of want it to look a little like anime, mainly with the eyes and jawline. I'll upload a better drawing in the future when I have settled on a design.

Animation Idea

I have thought of a story for my film, which is inspired by stories on mythical creatures and folktales.

Set in 14th Century England, there resides a small remote village in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by forests and mountains, it is a place of beauty...until you look a little closer, that is. The village is terrorized by a creature, that of which has never been seen before. It lives up in the mountain, and attacks the village without warning killing the livestock and even a few villagers. This has been going on for many months.

The film begins with a panoramic shot of the scenery, slowly closing in with hills and trees parting off screen until focused totally on the village. It then cuts to showing the village from inside, where we see that it looks quiet and almost deserted. A sign blows in the wind warning any travellers to stay away. Away from the village centre now, and we see a farm just on the outskirts. A figure is working in the fields, which when the camera cuts to a close up appears to be a boy. It is only when he turns around from hearing a sound of a bell do we see his face, to which he reacts instantly by dropping the rake he was holding. (now after this part, I'm stuck on what to do - my one idea was that he would run towards the sound, which originates from the village. When he arrives there is a crowd of people surrounding two figures, one of which is a soldier and other the village mayor. They had sent all their avaliable soldiers up to the mountain to kill the creature, but to no prevail. Only the one had surived, and he had just returned to give the bad news to the people. Desperate and scared, the Mayor then asks for anyone left brave enough to kill the creature, and the person who does so gets to marry his daughter - who is rumoured to be extremely beautiful, although no one has ever seen her in the flesh. Sort of an incentive I suppose. And that's when the boy decides to go off to try and kill the creature. BUT my other idea, was to have the bell, but instead of telling the people the soldiers had returned, it's instead a warning that the creature is coming. This will be set more in the evening, around dusk, and will have more of a horror feel to it, where we see villagers hiding under their windows in their houses and seeing the shadow of the creature through the window or in the gaps between nailed wooden planks. And perhaps a scream at the end when the creature manages to kill. The next morning, when it's over, the farmer boy walks to the village and there the mayor is asking anyone brave enough to kill the creature can marry his daughter (so the same as before, except with no soldiers - there will be none at all in this version).

So the boy sets off with a horse and cart to kill the creature, and manages to do so (I've yet to figure out a way he can - I'd like it to be clever - perhaps something a little silly like leaving a big poisoned pie for the creature to eat, and then the boy cuts its head off and brings it back to the village as proof that it is dead the same day). I was also thinking of having the creature sort of stalk him, so for example when the boy walks past a pond or a bush, you see its tail quickly or something. When the boy returns with the news, he is given a heroes welcome, and also his reward - the Mayors daughter. This is when we finally see her...except, she isn't what the boy imagined. She isn't beautiful at all, the complete opposite in fact. As ugly as anything he'd ever seen.

Now I'm not sure how to end the film, whether here or by having to add something else in after this - and I'm also not quite sure whether to have the girl in it at all. I wanted a twist of some sort in my film, and having had a discussion with one of my lecturers, I thought it would be funny for the girl to turn out to be ugly. I'm also a little confused on the tone I'm going for, whether it's light hearted and funny or dark and a sense of horror. This is something I'm going to have to think about.

As for other ideas, I thought that if I did go with the girl, then I wouldn't have the boy talk at all throught the film. Everyone else will, and as viewers we find out everything by other characters. He is silent throughout, except for at the end when he sees the girl and a word finally comes out of his mouth! (this is just a thought). Like, "OH HELL NO!" - Will Smith style.

The story is still in development, and I am trying to think of new ideas for it. But I would like to stick with the boy having to kill the creature anyway.

Back for my third and final year!

Well, better late than never I suppose!

Started back at uni last week, excited but also slightly terrified at what is to come! The time has finally arrived for me to begin thinking of an idea for animated film to Pitch in November. And if it gets the go ahead, I can finish off the Pre-Production stages, and then after Christmas start on Production. Scary haha! Meanwhile I have to work on my dissertation, soo definitely a busy year for me. ..Let's begin!

Project Cheese (Finished Animation)

Well here it is, my finished animation for the Yes, Yes, No assignment - Project Cheese. As you may already know, it was a group project consisting of me, Heidi Orford and Brian Williams. We each had 3 major roles and one worked after the other, so I think we had a really good set-up and in the end it worked out very well as we handed it in before the deadline set. Heidi was the main animator and animated the mouse and claw. I cleaned up any animations she gave to me and then coloured them in frame by frame - and then finally rendered them out. And Brian edited everything together and also created all the backgrounds.

Overall I'm pleased with how it looks. I think it may need some music and a little more sound effects, but I think for a 60-90 second piece of animation, which can have no dialogue apart from 'yes' and 'no', it works quite well. I'm pleased with the character and actually I could see him being used again in another story where he's trying to steal the cheese, this time using another created contraption maybe.

Final Cinematography Project

I've been trying to upload this for the past 3 days but have had no luck, so I've converted it to a lower quality format which explains why it isn't very good quality and a little juddery.

This is my finished film for the cinematography assignment that was due in yesterday. Me and my group had some really great feedback, but there are a few changes we need to make. The most important is the sound. We did want it to be a silent film, but we were told to add sound in places such as when the officer fires his gun or the sound of tearing flesh at the end. Some shots also need to be cut down as well, again with the second to last shot which goes on for a little too long, and when he finishes looking through the telescope.

Overall I'm quite pleased with this. I really like the black and white look to it, and we certainly put a lot of effort into this - whilst trying to complete 2 other projects at the same time.

Quick Note

I will upload the finished animations for both Yes, Yes, No and Red or Dead when they are given to me by my directors :)

Red or Dead Backgrounds/ Symbols

 

I didn't paint the queen but I did paint the two backgrounds. My role was main animator, but I helped with a few of the backgrounds/symbols to help Kylie and Phoebe (the two pre-production members in my group.

These 3 symbols were painted by Kylie, but I wanted to give an example as to the cut-out feel we wanted. This is the shot when the princess is shocked. We haven't included any smooth animations - everything is like the above.

Final Rendered Shot

We were unsure as to how to get an alpha channel in Flash so when we exported it and placed it in Premiere Pro, we could easily add the backgrounds. In the end though I had to render every shot with a green background so then it could be replaced with the actual backgrounds.

Red or Dead Project

It's coming along nicely at the moment. We're getting a lot done and in the past few days we've moved on quite a lot! Currently I'm taking symbols (photoshop drawings) which are being created by two members of my group (Phoebe and Kylie) and animating them in Flash, sticking to the cut-out look that we aimed for at the beginning of the project. So there will be no smooth animation, just lots of symbols one after the other to give the cut-out effect. I'm also painting some of the symbols (including the photo below) as well as a couple of the backgrounds which I will upload at a later date. My role is pretty much Head Editor, but I am helping with the production stuff as well.

 

I can't remember if I've mentioned the story of this project but basically it's about a princess saving a prince from a castle (reversed roles) and then escaping from the evil queen and her frog soldiers by using bicycles. It has to showcase the Red or Dead bicycles in some shape or form, but it isn't an advert. We just had to come up with a crazy storyline (which RoD wanted) and make sure to include the bicycles.

Shot from 'Project Cheese'

This is a test shot from Project Cheese (Yes, Yes, No project). I didn't draw the animation, but I cleaned it up and coloured it. The animation itself will be in our film, but he won't be pressing the button. That is from another scene. After consulting with my director she told me that he is just moving his hands and not pressing the button. But I had included the background as a test shot because I wanted a look at how the animation came together with the background.

Cinematography Project

These are screenshots from my cinematography project. We wanted to have it in black and white to fit with the era of the films setting.

Basically the story is set during World War 2 with a German Officer alone in a bunker. He spies a dead body on the beach near to his location and goes to check it out. He finds the body (who is a female gypsy) with an amulet in her hand which he takes. As he walks off the gypsy is shown to actually be alive and gets up off the floor. When he arrives back at his bunker the Officer is ambushed by zombies, and so runs back to the beach, with the undead in pursuit. He turns and fires his gun at the zombies, which proves to have no effect and he is eventually overran and killed. The final shot then shows his hand holding the amulet to the sky.

I was cast as one of the zombies in my group film project (which was really fun!). And as I am post-production, my role was to edit and put the footage we had filmed together, as well as add effects (which is yet to be done) and composite it. The effects won't be much, just some blood splatters and the like.

We filmed at Pendennis Castle as it has WW2 bunkers and artillery, which we thought would be perfect for our film. They were very happy for us to film there, and even let us go in for free!

Some of the cast and crew (with me in the middle!) after finishing the filming.

Just an update on what's happening (and why this is such a belated post)

Wow I really haven't posted anything in a long time! I literally had a month off during the summer. Visited London, which I've never been before. So that was exciting. Went to practically every tourist location there is. And I spend a fortune! But it was fun. After that it's just been work, work, work. Recently handed in my second lot of literature reviews and a game analysis towards my dissertation, so that's all done now. I actually quite enjoyed it! Just got a few film and animation projects going. Hopefully get 'Project Cheese' completed soon, it's nearly there! Then got a couple more to do. One is a 2 minute silent film and the other is a piece of animated and live-action footage showcasing a product (for us it's a bike) from a London based company called Red or Dead. We pitched to them a few days ago and they liked our idea, so now we can go ahead and get started on it.

Soo yeah, a busy but exciting few weeks! I'll try to check in when I can but there is a chance I won't haha.

Water Shader

Attempted to make a water shader in Maya. I think it looks pretty decent, certainly needs some tweaking here and there (and of course something better than just a polygon sphere!) but I think it's okay. Didn't take me too long at all, pretty easy process. I'm going to carry on with it and get it looking better. Perhaps adding more to the scene such as boat, and give it a background

Animatic

Animatic

Yes, Yes, No Work

Thought I should finally upload all the pre-production work that has been done for my group animation Project Cheese!

These pages are from the bible I made and put together containing all the work. What I've done myself are the storyboard, script, rough background designs, claw design and some research, as well as contributing towards some of the other work.

As well the work, I found myself playing the role as the producer, so I was the one to oversee everything and organise my group.

We are on good stead to complete the animation before the deadline. 

Blend Shaping

Nuke Lecture

Final Coloured Mouse Concept

This is the final mouse design which Heidi has drawn.

All we really need to do now is finish the backgrounds and a couple of other things (such as character turnaround) and then we can start on the animatic and bible!

First scene test

This is the new, updated scene (of the scene shot I've uploaded before) but with camera work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqu-lhc05VA

Mouse Character Designs